Getting there is all the effort.
I’m standing in Tokyo Central Station looking at a map asking myself “How do I get to ‘pregnant lady standing beside a tree and square lantern’ via ‘man’s head in a hat, water pump and tree on a box’?”. I step outside myself for a minute to ask myself “What’s wrong with this picture?”. Literally.
Japanese has three different character sets. I know this from studying this at school. Hiragana corresponds to particular sounds like our alphabet, Katakana, which are broken up parts of the more complicated Kanji (Kanji’s the third one in case all this Japanese is reducing my ability to be understood in English.) - which are basically one picture for one word. Since being in Japan I have come to discover that there are no useful maps of the city where roads are all marked in any language… which is how I found myself at Kyoto station looking to get to ‘pregnant lady standing beside a tree and square lantern’ via ‘man’s head in a hat, water pump and tree on a box’. I meant to mention this tip earlier but this is the best advice I can offer about travelling in Japan – don’t try and read the script – half the time sentences are made up of characters from all three alphabets – but when place names are concerned make up little stories for each character – they’ll probably be in Kanji and untranslatable into anything other than the place name… How sorry do you feel for Japanese children now? Especially when I struggle to say even the simplest thing in Japanese and people rush to my rescue to help me in their best English… I could do with some help learning languages from the smallest kid – but this is a nation that could do with some help with their mapping. Beware – up is not north by default… I’d like to be able to recommend where to get the best map from – if anyone knows can you tell me… Until then is ‘pick up sticks beside a waffle, fork with the middle prong the longest’ near ‘man’s head in a hat, water pump and tree on a box’?
Tags: japan, kat on location, travel tips